Chinese scholars listed the loyalty of Nanzhao to Tang China as the critical reason, if not the only reason, for Tang China's support,50 but Nanzhao's contacts with Tubo were frequently recorded in the Tibetan chronicles from the late seventh century onward. 51 Clearly Nanzhao was playing games with the two powerful neighbors; it managed to please both of them, winning Tang China's support and Tubo's non-involvement in its unification project.

Note 91: The close affiliations, here as elsewhere, between "literary" and "historical" sources (vernacular ballads or miracles and Latin chronicles) serve to remind us that such typologies of written sources, especially with regard to religious writings, are largely irrelevant and false distinctions. back

It is not my fault if my twenties were spent reading lots of variants of the Prose Tristan and pulling time sequences to pieces in Old French chronicles and drooling over the gore in the Mez cycle of epic legends.